From science to a love brand.

A mid-sized German pharma company with an established portfolio of herbal and chemically defined OTC medicines. Several heritage brands with high awareness among pharmacists, but stagnating consumer sales. Distribution through the pharmacy field force and increasingly through mail order. More than 500 employees.

The company held brands with decades of market presence and proven efficacy. Marketing communication was built entirely on scientific evidence. Package-insert logic dominated campaigns and POS materials. The language addressed the pharmacist as gatekeeper, not the consumer as decision-maker.

At the same time, new D2C brands from the food-supplement segment were gaining significant market share with emotional messaging and aggressive performance marketing. These brands operated with a fraction of the clinical evidence, yet outperformed the heritage brands in visibility, digital reach and brand loyalty.

The incumbent head of marketing came from the classic pharma environment. Regulatory reliability was impeccable. Impulses for emotional brand leadership, digital activation and cross-channel campaign management were, however, entirely missing. Management recognised that the problem lay not in the product, but in the way it was communicated.

Re-staffing the lead of marketing and brand communication, with the goal of positioning established OTC brands as love brands in consumers' perception, without breaching the regulatory guardrails.

Drafting a requirements profile in close coordination with management and Regulatory Affairs. Identifying candidates who combine commercial FMCG thinking with an understanding of the regulatory specifics of the pharma market. A particular requirement: sensitivity to a grown company culture with long tenures and a pronounced quality awareness.

ANDRIS Consulting deliberately did not prioritise the classic pharma candidate market. The search focused on leaders from the FMCG and cosmetics sector who had already worked in regulated markets or demonstrably brought the willingness to learn the pharmaceutical framework.

Through direct search and the targeted activation of passive candidates, we identified profiles that united three core competencies: experience in building emotional brand worlds, demonstrable success in performance marketing and digital campaign management, and a basic understanding of regulatory constraints in product communication.

In the selection process, ANDRIS Consulting additionally used a personality diagnostic based on the Big Five model. The conscientiousness factor served as an indicator of whether a candidate with an FMCG background would see the pharma market's regulatory discipline not as a brake, but as a framework for action. In parallel, cultural fit with the existing team was assessed in a structured way, to minimise the risk of a culture clash between FMCG pace and pharmaceutical diligence.

The position was filled within eight weeks. Within the first year, the new head of marketing carried out a complete relaunch of the lead brand. The campaign combined clinical evidence with emotional imagery and cross-channel delivery across pharmacy POS, social media and mail-order platforms, for the first time. No regulatory objections or warnings whatsoever.

The company recorded a measurable increase in brand awareness while broadening its consumer target group to younger consumers, and double-digit growth in the mail-order channel, driven largely by its first-ever collaboration with health influencers on Instagram.